Is ther a possibility to display the log(frequency) instead of the frequency in the hist plot?

Uwe Ligges wrote:

Witold Eryk Wolski wrote:

 Is there a possibility to display the log(frequency) instead of the
frequency in the hist?

I think you want something like the following example:

 x <- runif(100) * 10
 my.hist <- hist(x)
 my.hist   # have a look at the values!
 my.hist$counts <- log(my.hist$counts, 10)  # logarithm with base 10
 plot(my.hist)  # now plot it again with log(frequency)

Uwe Ligges

Hi Uwe!
First thanks for your answer.
Some questions still remain to me.
1. How take an log if one of the my.hist$counts equals 0?

You could try log10(my.hist$counts+1), which is a standard transformation
in ecology.

2. You code expample produces an error message which i doesnt understand.

plot(my.hist)  # now plot it again with log(frequency)

Error in plot.window(xlim, ylim, log, asp, ...) :
        invalid xlim

I don't get it here either.  Are you doing _exactly_ what Uwe suggested
above?  Or are you doing the histogram etc. on your own data (rather than
a sample from runif())?  What is the range of your data?

3. I tried as workaround something similar.
plot(my.hist$mids,log(my.hist$counts),type="s") And this would work quite good for
my needs.
But problem with log(0) = -Inf still remains.

I think I have to formulate my question more general. Why, and this is an question
which I am asking myself since
I am started using  R becouse im using the hist plot quite often,  the hist plot in
the base package has no similar
options like eg. the histogram plot in XMGR?

What are those options?

  The general answers to the questions "why doesn't R have ... ?" are
usually:

  1. it would be a useful feature, but no-one has thought of/suggested it
yet (?);
  2. ditto, but no-one has had the time or energy or specific knowledge
required to code it (e.g. full integration of 3D graphics, GAM);
  3. it represents something that at least some people (the R Core team,
who tend to be awfully knowledgeable about statistical and graphical
issues) think is a bad idea (e.g. type III sums of squares);
  4. it is minor enough, or there is an easy enough way to work around it,
that spending time on it/"bloating" R with it doesn't seem worthwhile.

  Ben

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !)  To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._